


A Heart of Broken Glass

by FoalyWinsForever



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Explicit Language, Friendship, Multi, RebellionFailed!AU, Romance, Violence, help i don't know how to use this site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 03:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoalyWinsForever/pseuds/FoalyWinsForever
Summary: Much like fissile uranium, there's only so much a person can take before they start spitting some right back. Edited version of an old SYOT that went aaaaall sorts of places, feat. the wildest group of tributes I've ever had the honor to receive, a nuclear-apocalypse Arena, some Gamemakers of questionable loyalties, what feels almost like a love story except there's molten hatred where the love ought to be, and a wildly overwrought moral about escalation. (Note the rating, but I'll give content warnings before anything really bad happens.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As the summary says, this is the repost of an old SYOT. It switches to the usual first-person present tense after this.

Deyna watched patiently as President Fife picked up the little sphere of metal, tossing and catching it.

“Ahem,” Deyna said gently.

Fife jumped at his voice, synthesized by the gas mask strapped over his red hair. “Ah! Oh. Balthazar. Yes, hello,” he said coolly.

“That metal, sir.”

Fife tossed and caught it again, trying to look suave, but barely managing to keep control of the thing. “What about it?”

“That’s plutonium.”

“Is it? Interesting, very interesting.”

“Plutonium is radioactive, Mr. President. Perhaps you should go get dosed by the medics?”

Fife’s lilac eyes widened. “… Is it?” he said again. He put the sphere down gently and scampered from the cell.

Deyna smiled and picked it up. “Who’s a good demon core?” he cooed at the metal, which was indeed radioactive, but not of the variety that would do harm through his gloves. “Is it you? Is it you? Coochie coochie coo.”

“Mr. Balthazar?”

“Hmmmm?” Deyna said slowly, spinning the plutonium ball on the table.

“I-Is that, er… is that really the demon core, sir?” the technician stammered, peeking through the bars of the cell from the grimy hallway. The man’s uncertain voice did not match the gas mask he wore, identical to Deyna’s, designed to be as intimidating as possible.

“Oh, yes. I suppose it’s not exactly recognizable on sight, is it?” Deyna mused. “Get some masking tape and label it. Maybe it’ll give the District Fives a jump.”

The techie blinked, nodded, and darted off.

The Head Gamemaker kept spinning the core idly, watching the hallway through the bars. The technician’s footsteps faded out in one direction, Fife’s in the other. The wrong way, incidentally. Deyna sighed, gave the plutonium a last fond pat, and set off after the President.

“Sir?” he called.

“Yes?” Fife’s voice echoed back from around the corner, a bit more high-pitched than before. Deyna smirked. The place already had such _atmosphere._ It wasn’t quite as filthy as he wanted and his favorite tricks weren’t installed yet, but this arena had personality. It told a _story._ He was very excited.

Deyna stepped over a dead body. Real and very fresh, for that extra verisimilitude. “This way, sir.”

“Which way?” Fife said dolefully. “You’re echoing.”

“… I’ll just come find you, sir,” Deyna said, taking a deep breath to fortify his patience. He adjusted his gas mask and set off down the dark corridor, noting that Fife still wasn’t wearing one. Hopefully he wouldn’t be held responsible for that. Who _could_ hold him responsible? Not Fife, certainly.

He rounded a corner to find Fife standing in the middle of one of the tiny lead vaults, his lilac suit streaked with black dust. Fife looked up. “ _There_ you are.”

Deyna nodded. “The exit is back this way, sir.”

“Hmm,” Fife said. “How close are we to having the arena completed?”

“According to the engineering team… fifty-eight percent,” Deyna said, checking his computer. “Most of the infrastructure is done, but there’s a lot of wiring and such left. We’re right on schedule.”

“Cameras?”

“Still working on the mounts and determining the placing for the hidden ones.”

Fife nodded. Before Deyna knew what was happening, he was pinned to the wall by his neck, his gas mask torn off.

“M-Mr. President?” he choked out, tugging at Fife’s hands instinctively and unsuccessfully.

“All this plutonium, Balthazar. Where’d you get it?”

Deyna gulped. “Er. Well… you know.”

“Are you honestly telling me… that you did business with District Thirteen… just to stock your Hunger Games?” Fife snarled in his face.

“Not with the government!” Deyna protested. “A breakaway group.”

“ _You have access to rogue groups in District Thirteen?”_

“… Er.”

“And you thought _I_ was stupid.”

“In my defense, you did do a remarkably convincing impression of it. Sir.”

“Works like a charm, doesn’t it?” Fife grumbled.

“It does,” Deyna said agreeably, well aware that he had been thoroughly outdone. He’d been so convinced Fife was a nonentity that he’d never noticed the man was nearly twice his size.

“So what’s your plan?”

Deyna blinked. “Pardon?”

“Communicating with District Thirteen? Hoarding weapons-grade plutonium? I can promise you your life if you tell me everything. No torture. You have my word.”

“I… sir, no, it’s not like that. Not at all. I promise you, I am not a traitor.”

“Why the contact with Thirteen, then?”

Deyna blinked, wondering if he could be misinterpreting the question. “Because I needed the materials, sir. For the Games.”

Fife’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve always loved going behind my back, Balthazar.”

Deyna shrugged apologetically, coughing a little when doing so made Fife inadvertently tighten his grip. “I thought you were an idiot. It was fun,” he said matter-of-factly. “No need for any of that anymore. I mean… think about it, sir. I believe we’ve established that you tricked me fair and square. But did I ever try to assassinate you or anything like that while I was under the impression that you were a drooling idiot? I did not. Sir.”

“You’ll share every bit of information you have about Thirteen, and you’ll explain why you didn’t do so before.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Of course, sir. I can do the latter right now. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d mess it up, and it would be better to save the information to share with the next President.”

Fife considered that. “Understandable. You’ll also consent to observation, physical and technological.”

“Of course, sir. I don’t mind at all. Always happy to show my work, mm-hmm,” Deyna gritted out, standing on tiptoe to keep his windpipe working. “Certainly.”

“You’re either being totally genuine or plotting my murder.”

Both, as it happened. Deyna was quite serious about having no political aspirations; his concerns began and ended with the Games. But it also happened that he preferred _not_ to be choked, and both his trachea and his ego were already bruised.

He looked away. “I just want to do my job, sir.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do it _brilliantly.”_

Deyna risked a toothy smile. “Oh, me too, sir.”

 

 

 

Cleo’s cackle rang out across the Gamemakers’ office. “Get a load of _this_ motherfucker.”

Tibbi leaned over her shoulder to read the kid’s profile. “Why, what’s…? Oh my gracious to Betsy, what a _bastard._ ”

“But then there’s her,” Cleo said gleefully. “Oh, man. These two, man. We gotta make ‘em fight.”

Tibbi’s face lit up. “Did you see the girl I found before, too? Maybe the two of them will ally, and, and… ooh, you just _know_ the Careers will try and track him down once they figure out what’s going on, and… This is gonna be _awesome.”_

“Ahem.”

They turned to find Deyna behind them, looking grumpier than usual and rubbing his neck.

“Good morning,” Tibbi chirped.

“No,” he grumbled. “Are you done with the roster yet?”

“Er,” Cleo said.

“What’s the holdup?”

“Scouting teams, sir. Bit of a mess, but it should all be under control soon.”

“Soon,” Deyna repeated doubtfully, throwing a glance at the tall man behind him.

“Who is that, by the way, sir?” Cleo asked, staring at the man unabashedly. The man’s glasses were too dark to tell whether he was staring back.

Deyna swept past her. “A friend,” he said airily.

“That’s funny, because he sure looks like one of the President’s personal thugs.”

“I have friends in high places,” Deyna sniffed. “I _am_ in high places.”

“You sure you’re not just high?”

He considered it. “No. Just get me that damn roster, would you?”

“Doing our best, sir.”

“Somehow that doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

Cleo made a face at his back.

 

 

 

Hundreds of miles away, an Avox woman died. She was the ninth that day.

An engineer in a gas mask turned up the portable fluorescent floodlight by the door. The stark glare splashed across fiberglass body bags piled on the concrete floor, the first few lined up neatly, later ones haphazardly slung down when it became apparent that the death rate would be immense. A Geiger counter clicked gently in the corner, the reading slightly higher since the dying woman had been brought in.

He punched a needle into the woman’s arm, drew blood into a tiny vial, and plugged the vial into a device on his belt. “Damn,” he said.

“How much?”

“Twelve grays.”

The second man whistled, his mask rendering the sound as a soft shriek. “Where was she?”

“Let me check.” The first engineer scanned the tracker in the woman’s arm, pulling up her assignment history. “Looks like the workshop room, mostly. Yeah, we’ll have to bring that down; anyone who spends a lot of time in there will be someone the Gamemakers want to stay alive for a while. What’s in there?”

“Some cesium-137, I think. Might’ve been polonium, too. All in capsules, though; shouldn’t be more than a millisievert an hour. Just to give ‘em a jump if they get a counter working.”

“Some of the capsules must be leaking.” The engineer glanced around the the room, a vault they’d been forced to set aside for Avox corpses. “Hey, Avox, c’mere.”

A teenage girl with a torn paper surgical mask tensed in the corner, crouching over the body of an older boy.

“Yes, you. Leave him alone a minute; I promise he won’t run off on you.”

The girl stood up and crept over warily. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair limp and full of gray dust. Her posture conveyed the exhaustion of someone who’d been so scared for so long that she’d lost the ability to do anything but what she was told.

“Pick up a Geiger counter and go to the workshop. That’s section 3A, second level. There are cabinets in the back of the room with little gray balls loose in them, like marbles. Hold them up to the counter. If the light turns red, bring the ball to Contamination.”

The girl’s eyes went dead.

“Quickly, please,” the engineer reprimanded.

She tilted her head, giving him a questioning look.

“What?”

She drew her finger across her throat and gave him the look again.

“Will it kill you, you mean?”

She nodded.

He considered it. “I doubt it. Hold it far away from your body and walk fast. Can’t hurt to use tongs if you can find them. Don’t eat it and don’t skip any mammograms for the rest of your life, sweetie.”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then swallowed hard, nodded, and trudged off, staring at the ground.

The engineer heaved an impatient sigh. “I wish they wouldn’t _look_ at me like that.”

“Makes you feel like a monster,” his colleague agreed.


	2. Reaping: Luka

**Luka Skade, District Three, 16**

 

It’s like getting up for water in the middle of the night. You can’t be scared if you just don’t _think_ about it. There are no monsters under the bed until I start to wonder. The Hunger Games are nothing to worry about as long as I keep staring at the asphalt and playing with the zipper of my jacker and concentrating on Dad’s hand on my shoulder.

He does this every year. Fights his way to the edge of the roped-off sections, sometimes literally. I’ve seen him pick people up off the ground and put them down somewhere else just so he can stand next to me. It’s not that he’s a violent guy, really; he’s just six foot four and built like a bar fight waiting to happen and maybe just the tiniest little bit overprotective of me. I don’t mind. He cares. I’m lucky.

Now, if only I could inherit his height and build, and not just the rose-red hair. His arm is as big around as my thigh, and I have to stretch my neck and think positive thoughts to hit five foot four.

Well, at least it’s a nice day, I muse. One of the nice things about living in northern District Three. You could easily freeze to death in the winter, of course, but in early summer it’s just lovely. Except the whole Hunger Games thing. That’s bad.

But there are so many people, and Dad would never let me take out tesserae even though we sort of need them, so—Wait. No. I’m thinking about it. I’m not gonna think about it.

“Did you feed Chekhov?” Dad says, probably just to break the tense silence between us.

“Yeah. He’d let me know if I didn’t.”

There’s still a hole in the wall from where we busted through it to pull the complaining cat out a few years back. No clue how he got there or where he came from, but he’s ours now. He talks a lot.

The massive screen at the front of City Seventeen’s square flashes on. A few people cheer, probably just happy to get it over with, but there’s an angry muttering and the cheers go silent.

Suddenly the whole crowd starts clapping. I can’t see what’s going on over the shoulders of the boys in front of me no matter how much I crane my neck. It’s a little claustrophobic, down here at the bottom of a well of heads and shoulders.

“Peacekeeper onstage,” Dad says in my ear. “Held up a sign saying ‘applause.’”

Oh. That makes sense, I guess. The stage is there for in case someone from here is Reaped, decked out with a podium and banners so they’ll have something to film.

The Mayor appears on the huge screen, big and high enough that even I can see it. He reads the Treaty of Treason in a rapid-fire monotone and hands the microphone to the escort before practically teleporting offstage. _I feel you, buddy,_ I want to say. _I wouldn’t wanna be near her either._

Our escort is more or less naked. I would be okay with that, even though she’s not the youngest, fittest person in the world. Inner beauty and expressing yourself and so on. No problem. The issue is the crazy glowing purple demon eyes. I’m pretty open-minded, I guess, but I draw the line at demonic possession.

Her voice is wet. She’s miles away, but I can practically feel her spitting all over the crowd. I want to take a shower. Everyone sort of flinches and hunkers down and waits it out until she gets to the part we give a fuck about.

“Ladies first, of _course,”_ she declares, snapping her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Oh, let me just… this one? Hmm, no, I don’t care for the way it’s folded. This…? Ugh, no, it’s so… so… I don’t like it. Ah, now _this_ one!”

There’s a collective cringe from the girls’ side of the square. I think of everyone over there I care about. Too many. Usually it’s a good thing, but not today.

“I like this one,” she explains. “Look at this delicate fold. I just _know_ this tribute will be equally delicate and beautiful. I bet we’ll all fall in love!”

I can practically hear the crickets chirping, both here in City Seventeen and onscreen in City One.

“The lucky lady is…”

Pause. Pause pause pause. Of course. I’m getting angry at her, and I don’t _get_ angry.

“… From City Eleven…”

Everyone holding their breath lets it go. The screen splits, half of it staying in City One, the other half going to Eleven. They’ve tried to tidy up. They haven’t succeeded. I think there’s blood on the backdrop, and the stage is deserted.

Our escort blinks. “Ahem. Anyone home?”

“Coming! Yes. Here.” A disheveled woman sprints into the frame, adjusting the microphone on her podium. It sparks a bit. She doesn’t blink. Possibly because she’s got a black eye. “Ready when you are.”

For a moment I hear a scream and a series of gunshots before whoever’s editing the sound from Eleven manages to filter them out. The woman’s expression doesn’t change from its frozen smile.

“Yes, okay,” the escort says testily. Well, maybe she shouldn’t have picked someone from Eleven, then. I’m from the bad part of City Seventeen, I guess, but City Eleven is hell. You get mugged on my street. You get kidnapped and sold off for spare parts over there.

The smiling woman is replaced by a crowd shot. They’re struggling to find people who aren’t glaring or bloody, but it’s impossible. It pans over the twelve-year-old girls hopefully, then cuts away when it finds one of them tossing up a middle finger and two more feeling each other up in the corner of the pen.

Our escort takes a let’s-just-get-this-over-with-dammit breath. “Viss Bardier!” she calls.

It takes the camera a second to find the girl and I almost laugh when it does. There’s no fear or even sadness in her expression. Just flat disgust and a bit of contempt, like the Capitol has dared to ruin her plans for the day and has no idea who it’s messing with. The set of her jaw and the way she cracks her neck when she steps forward strikes me as dangerous. No reaction shot from her family and friends; she must be Work Group. She’s dark-haired, tan-skinned, on the short side, but muscular. Her T-shirt might have been white once.

She takes the stage with a bit of a swagger, staring at Smiling Lady. “Now what?”

Smiling Lady blinks. “I don’t know,” she says through her insane grin. “Say something nice.”

Viss looks right into the camera and gives it the most utterly humorless smile I’ve seen in my life. It’s not just the absence of happiness. It’s _rage._ More than she could’ve mustered in the last minute or so. I think she’s one of those slow-burning people, all rock and metal on the outside, with a white-hot core.

“Well, hey. I’m Viss,” she says flatly to all of Panem. The smile takes on the hint of a tight, but oddly weary smirk. “Guess you’re gonna fall in love with my delicate beauty any second.”

I feel bad for even thinking it right now, but she’s not bad-looking. A little less fragile, skinny limbs or nice clothes or delicate anything, a little more wild curly hair, bruises on her forearms, thighs she could murder with, and that stony look in her eye that says she’d kill without blinking.

I blink as I realize I have a crush on her already. Dammit. That’s… not good. For a few reasons. Why do I always chase the girls who might strangle me and leave me in an alley?

“Lovely to meet you, dear,” the escort cuts in.

Viss gives her that same I-don’t-have-the-energy-for-this-level-of-bullshit look. “Okay.”

And she’s gone. No more split screen. I want her to be okay, but I’m not sure what ‘okay’ would _be_ for her.

“Time for the boys. From City Seventeen!”

The whole square jumps. We wait for the dramatic pause thing, but I think she’s learned her lesson; she scoops up a piece and sticks with it. Dad’s hands tighten on my shoulders. My stomach squirms. It’s okay. Don’t think. I have no control over the situation anyway; I can just close my eyes and relax and it’ll all be over and it’ll be okay–

“Luka Skade!”

Oh.

Ohhh. _That’s_ the flaw in my strategy of not thinking about it. I’m zero percent prepared for this.

I can do the tough-guy thing when I need to. District Three does that to you. If I could only keep my shit together, I’d come off as the scrappy little peacock-haired punk kid, just like everyone else. Flash a switchblade and wink at people and show teeth and do the whole routine.

I _could_ do that, if I were ready for it. But I’m not. So what I actually do is stand there in shock, tears in my eyes, as the taller boys around me back away and Dad’s arms wrap around me protectively.

Uh-oh.

For a second I forget how much trouble I’m in, because I know him well enough to guess he’s about to get himself in some more immediate trouble of his own.

“Let go,” I whisper.

He tightens his grip around my chest. Not a bat’s chance in hell I can get him off me before the Peacekeepers reach us.

“Dad, it’s fine, just…” It’s not convincing. Less so because my voice is cracking and it’s all I can do not to burst into tears.

“No,” he says in disbelief. “They can’t… You…”

I see white helmets and reflective visors cutting through the crowd. If they try to forcibly separate us, Dad is gonna start hitting them, and they’re gonna shoot him, and… I know I won’t literally die, but I’ll die.

“Dad. Please. You’ll see me in a minute, just _please_ don’t get shot.”

“No. No, no, no, no, no…”

The Peacekeepers are surrounding us now. We get a grace period, I guess, before they start prying us apart with rifles.

I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that Dad can’t save me. People respect him, and not just because he’s huge. No one’s really well-off here, but I’ve always had an apartment to sleep in and the comfort that I won’t wake up with my throat slashed. He got me antibiotics when I got sick. I still don’t know how. I’ve almost never been hungry. I don’t remember it, but people tell me he used to drink a _lot_ but stopped when I was born. He’s so happy when I get good grades, and I think he’s convinced himself A’s will somehow get me out of here. I can _feel_ how much he cares about me and wants me to be safe and happy and all that, how much time and effort he’s poured into my wellbeing, how proud he is of me.

And now I’m about to be literally torn from his arms, and it seems egotistical, but I don’t know what he’ll do without me. He doesn’t care about anything else. I think I was his last hope.

Plus, of course, I’m terrified for my own sake. I’m not a killer. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be scared for days and days, unable to trust anyone or anything. I _can’t._ And I wanted to graduate, I wanted to talk to the green-haired girl down the hall, I wanted to finish the book I was reading. How can they do this?

The Peacekeepers are on me now. I want to make eye contact with the one right in front of me, but I only see my own pale, pointy face staring back at me in a panic. Even though I just told Dad to let me go, I shrink back toward him, closing my eyes and hiding my face against my shoulder and falling back on five-year-old logic. I’ll just hide and let him handle it and it’ll be okay.

“Mr. Skade,” the nearest Peacekeeper chides. “You should be honored.”

I gulp, willing Dad to stay calm with everything I have. Somehow he does. Then the Peacekeeper puts a hand on me.

_Crack._

For a moment, I just stare in disbelief. He actually cracked the man’s helmet.

The Peacekeepers pounce on the opportunity, grabbing Dad’s arm before he can wrap it around me again. They drag me out from the other one. I’m too shell-shocked to fight them myself, but when a Peacekeeper goes flying over my head I know Dad doesn’t have the same problem.

I twist around to catch his eye. “ _Stop,”_ I hiss. He won’t hear me over the noise, but he’ll get the point.

“What else can they do?” he snarls, smacking a rifle away from his chest and knocking the Peacekeeper to the ground after it. He pulls his foot back like he’s about to deliver a hit even Capitol medicine might not be able to fix. Thirty fingers tense on thirty triggers.

“You think I can take you dying right now?” I yell at him.

Now I’m freaking out for real. That gets his attention. He stops fighting and immediately there are ten Peacekeepers on him.

“Don’t hurt him,” I plead with one of the ones holding me, of which there are four. Why? They’re all twice my size and I haven’t even tried to fight them. “C’mon, you know he didn’t mean it, he just–”

The man gives me a sharp shake, like he’s either warning me to shut up or just doesn’t feel like listening. They hustle me up onto the little stage thing. That, I’m _definitely_ not ready for. The crazy thought crosses my mind that Viss is almost certainly watching and I doubt she’s impressed with the trembling, wide-eyed heap of skinny ginger that is me at the moment.

The crowd stares up at me. They’re on my side and I know it, but I’m still overwhelmed by so many pairs of eyes on me at once. All of Panem is watching me, and it’s the weirdest feeling. I’m not _important._ I’m just not. Hell, sometimes I’m not sure I’m even a real person. Suddenly I’m a celebrity in the worst way possible and it has to be some kind of awful joke.

And I can’t find Dad in the crowd. I’m not even nauseous anymore, it’s just a dull, heavy ache in my stomach. At least I’ll know before I go. Either he’ll show up at the Unity Building—City Seventeen’s local subsidiary to the Justice Building in City One—or he won’t. And then I’ll know. And then either they’ll have to pry us apart again, or I guess I’ll sit there and cry, and then…

A smiling woman pops up next to me, holding out a microphone. She’s identical to the one in City Eleven, or maybe not. I’m not thinking straight.

“You two twins?” I ask stupidly. My voice echoes across the square. I think my knees are about to give out.

The woman blinks. “Just say something,” she hisses, shoving the microphone into my hands.

I gulp and turn to face the crowd again. All I need is something to say that isn’t beyond idiotic, and for my voice to not crack while I say it. While the universe is granting total fucking miracles, I’d like a pony and a batch of snickerdoodles.

“Hey,” I say.

So far, so good. My desperate search of the crowd pays off when I find a girl from my math class. We’re casual acquaintances at best, but one time she smiled and said thank you when I picked up the pencil she dropped, and that’s good enough for me. She gives me a weaker version of the same smile when she catches my eye, like she realizes she’s my weird lifeline and wants to help as much as she can.

“So… I-I’m Luka,” I soldier on. The girl next to her gives me a thumbs-up, and I smile a little even though I’m sick and terrified. “Dunno how much I’m s’posed to talk, but, uh, I know some of you, and I wanna see you again, so… wish me luck, yeah?”

I glance at Smiling Woman Number Two. She nods and holds out a hand for the microphone, gesturing me off the stage in the direction of the same Peacekeepers who had me before. For a second I balk, but what choice do I have? I walk right back over to them. One puts a light hand on my shoulder and guides me through a curtain behind the stage.

Now we’re in a little fabric-surrounded tent thing full of behind-the-scenes stuff like cameras and makeup tables. The second the cloth swooshes shut behind me, I’m grabbed by both elbows and frisked. My knife clatters into a plastic bin.

“Hey, c’mon!” I protest. “Look, I’m not gonna do anything, but that’s–”

“You can’t take it in the arena,” Smiling Woman Number Two snaps as she shoves through the curtain after me. She’s not smiling anymore. “No weapons as tokens.”

“But–”

“I’ll take care of it. I will personally return it to you if you come back. Okay?”

It could be nice of her, except the way she says it is nasty, like she’s mocking me for even entertaining the notion that I’m coming back alive. She’s got a point. I might as well start getting used to the mental image of Dad opening a coffin with my body in it. And that’s assuming _he’s_ still alive.

I don’t want to break down in front of these people any more than I already have, but it’s a close fight to keep something like composure. I wish I were tough. Really, truly tough to the core, not just the knife-twirling, peacocking punk bullshit I go along with because it’s tough to find clothes that _don’t_ look like I’m about to start a street fight and goddammit maybe I like my hair blue sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I can kill, or handle Dad dying. The thought of being in the arena all alone makes my guts feel like cold mud. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been alone for more than five minutes at a time.

This is gonna _suck._

 


End file.
